Unknown Assailants Fire On, Destroy Transformers at California Power Substation - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702304851104579359141941621778-lMyQjAxMTA0MDAwNDEwNDQyWj <comment><USER2> Key takeaway: the replacement time for transformers is very nontrivial:

 _The country 's roughly 2,000 very large transformers are expensive to build, often costing millions of dollars each, and hard to replace. Each is custom made and weighs up to 500,000 pounds, and "I can only build 10 units a month," said Dennis Blake, general manager of Pennsylvania Transformer in Pittsburgh, one of seven U.S. manufacturers. The utility industry keeps some spares on hand._

Attacks at a number of sites could cripple electricity distribution infrastructure across large areas of the US for months, and force utilities to prioritize repairs among widely disparate locations: if Washington, NYC, San Jose, and Minneapolis are all wiped out, are you going to protect the government, banking and financial sector, high tech, or a large population who will freeze or roast without power?

<comment><USER3> At the risk of ending up on a list somewhere, taking out a few key employees at the 7 places making replacements in conjunction with taking out key transformers and you suddenly have a crisis on your hands. That worries me a whole lot more than some idiot on a plane.

<comment><USER2> Suppose you've got an enemy who can slip sight-unseen through airport security, pass through fences and walls as if they don't exist, infiltrate homes and offices by way of schoolchildren, target its victims on transit and in theaters, and kill between 2 and 30% of the population.

That's the scenario for a widespread pandemic disease outbreak on the scale of the Spanish Flu. H5N1 mortality rate reported by WHO is 60% (though this could be a result of only seeing more virulent cases -- it might be as low as 30% -- which is to say, vastly higher than any global pandemic of the past century: [http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/overestimating_avian...](http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/overestimating_avian_flu/)).

Which raises the question: what is civilization's bus number? How many people in critical positions could be taken, whether by terrorists (homegrown or otherwise) or disease, without having strongly negative effects?

No need to limit your speculation to human agents.

<comment><USER3> I was more addressing the country level directed attack with my post.

I try not to think about global pandemics, otherwise I'd have to live in the middle of nowhere in a sealed structure to feel safe.

If we have an extinction level event, it'll likely be a global pandemic or significant climate shift. In either case we are totally fscked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is kind of a big deal, if this becomes a trend...</comment>


Smartphones and the Disappearance of Idle Time - <AUTHOR> http://concertwindow.com/3077/smartphones-and-the-disappearance-of-idle-time

<comment><USER2> this is very true. while idle time is nearly erased with a smartphone, it's important to be cognizant to put down our device(s) when in certain situations, such as social outings, dates, etc. or it will begin to affect our perspective and paint a negative image.</comment>


How Kids Learn with iPads - <AUTHOR> http://betakit.com/2012/03/17/ipads-changing-the-way-children-learn-today <comment><USER2> Teaching kids with technology is always dilemma. Good article.

</comment><comment><USER3> Really well researched, interesting article on a timely topic.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow, very interesting and well written! Ipads are amazing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Petty interesting article.</comment>


Madagascar pochard: World's rarest bird gets new home - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46703335 <comment><USER2> >> "They range from sedimentation, invasive species, pollution, poor agricultural practises - a whole suite of problems that create the perfect storm making it very difficult for a species like the Madagascar pochard to survive."

It is a duck? Why is it so sensitive? Other ducks seems to thrive in relatively close contact with humans.

Wikipedia has a little more:

"The cause of decline was the introduction of numerous fish species in the lake that killed most of the pochard chicks and damaged nesting sites. Adult birds are also likely to have become victims of introduced fishes."

What fish kills adult ducks? This is borderline shark territory. I'd be careful about kids swimming around such predators.

<comment><USER3> > _What fish kills adult ducks?_

From the referenced article on Wikipedia, it seems to be [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilapia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilapia) but they seem to be mostly talking about competition for food supply rather than direct killing of adult ducks:

> _fish, especially Tilapia, have depleted essential food supplies and likely > increased nest-predation for the species (Pidgeon 1996). The introduction of > Tilapia into Alaotra probably had a devastating effect on the pochard and > other more widespread waterbirds preferring emergent vegetation_</comment></comment>


Cuis: A Minimalist Smalltalk Environment, Based on Squeak - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev <comment><USER2> The guy who wrote this makes software for a satellite company. He implemented the entire FFI library because he wanted to use Smalltalk instead of C in that situation.</comment>


NAR 2: Serbian Assembly Language - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAR_2 <comment><USER2> It's kinda refreshing to see a assembly(/ programming) language which isn't based on English for once. Personally as a non-native speaker, writing code in anything else than English seems unnatural. But that probably just have to do with the culture and environment in which I've learned to program. I started out self-taught, which meant all my sources were in English. Here in Denmark, the first introduction to programming my class-mates got was through Gymnasium (HTX), where when talking about programming concepts they would be translated to their Danish equivalent. It just sounded to wrong to me, but there's nothing that dictates that English should be the standard, other than that's the current spoken international language in the Western world, which has been more or less the forefront in this field so far.

And it might not be so far fetched that in the future significant programming languages might use another natural languages. I wouldn't see surprised to see engineers from China to develop programming languages for example that have a chance to be in Chinese.

<comment><USER3> Well much of the 20th century computing research was done in the UK and the US.

Since the 1930's English has replaced German as the common language for exact science if you were studying engineering upto the end of the 1920's you would pretty much have had to learn German at the time to be able to read textbooks and cutting edge papers.

And while we might get natural language programming (even tho I think that the recent advancement in visual assisted programming kinda makes that irrelevant) English would most likely still remain the standard at least as far as the actual ASCII alphabet.

When BASIC (and the likes) was popular there were quite a few localized versions of it including Russian, Chinese (which mostly simply mapped simplified Chinese to it's English counterparts on the keyboard which created a language that made very little sense) as well many European languages (German, Italian, French). But considering that for the most part programming languages are now consolidated there is very little chance that localized languages would become popular, sure you can localize pretty much any language since you only need to modify the compiler/interpreter but it just doesn't makes sense.

English as being one of the most simplest languages (fairly simple grammatical rule set, low word count etc.) as well as the fact that for better or worse pretty much every term in computer science originated in English just means we'll have to stick to it.

And while China does like localizing most things considering they've added English to their national curriculum now you'll have more English speakers in China within a decade than the rest of the world combined. India already has the 2nd most English speakers in the world and is expected to pass the US within the next decade to become the country with most English speakers.

<comment><USER4> When I did my degree in the 90's, German was still pretty common for graphics research.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there anything interesting other that it is a Serbian X? In my opinion, and I am from Serbia, no. Please, keep in mind that NAR WAS a Serbian Assembly Language.

It was created a long time ago. At that time, most students in Serbia did not speak English sufficiently well, foreign books were very expensive and very difficult to acquire, and the requirements were for all courses to be taught in Serbian.

In that context, a theoretical assembly such as NAR totally made sense. Hats down to the creators.

Today, Serbian kids interested in computers have so much English exposure on the Internet, that it is not that hard for them to use English technical literature. They are so few, Serbia being a small country, that it does not make sense economically to publish technical books in Serbian, let alone create Serbian programming languages.

That is better for the kids, since they will get the jobs in companies working for foreign markets anyway, so English is unavoidable.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very interesting reminds me of Karel. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_\(programming_language\))</comment>


Amazon App Store: Rotten To The Core - <AUTHOR> http://shiftyjelly.wordpress.com/2011/08/02/amazon-app-store-rotten-to-the-core/

<comment><USER2> He knew it was a bad deal, and that it didn't seem to work with their business model, but he did it any way (as pressured by other people in the company, which he admits). There's absolutely no surprises for them in this post, just regret. Sure, they didn't "realize" that it would garner so many free downloads, but that was always a chance, and in any case could have been quickly determined before agreeing by contacting other developers of featured apps.

The one piece of legitimate news here is that app of the day developers aren't being compensated at all, but that comes no where near justifying "rotten to the core", especially as they're all well aware of the terms when they agree to them.

He seems overly concerned with people who download the app just because they think it will trigger some micropayment to the developer, but that can't be a large number of people (developers paying attention to the launch terms of the market) and in any case are very unlikely to make up much of his support burden.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure that they knew it was a bad deal.

In the Apple store, if you got that many downloads and that kind of placement, the traffic from the various lists and high placement for 7 days would convert to many many paid sales over the following days.

<comment><USER4> We suspected it was a bad deal, but tried it anyway as an experiment. Our blog post wanted to point that out, but more so we took issue with the fact that most people think Amazon pays 20% of the asking price even when an app is given away. Their agreement with devs says as much. No one seems to know that to be featured you have to agree to 0%. Again we agreed, but the secrecy is where our beef lies, we wanted to make that public.

<comment><USER5> I agree strongly that Amazon needs to make this clearer in their emails an admin pages (listing earnings that don't exist is _terrible_ ) but as far as their agreement goes, I think you are mistaken.

Section 2.a. of the Amazon Appstore agreement, emphasis mine:

"a. Royalty. For each sale of an App, we will pay you a royalty ("Royalty") equal to the greater of (i) 70% of the purchase price or (ii) 20% of the List Price (defined in and subject to section 5i) as of the purchase date. _No Royalty is payable for Apps with a List Price of $0.00._ Such purchase price excludes taxes and any separately stated fees or charges. _A Royalty is due only for sales for which we have received final payment from or on behalf of an end user._ If an App is purchased using a credit card or bank account deduction mechanism, final payment will be deemed to have occurred when the applicable credit card company or bank has fully settled the payment for the applicable purchase."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's absolutely incredible. It's also the first I'd heard about difficulties with the Amazon App Store (which, if I remember correctly, was opened to great fanfare about how developer & user friendly it was)

It does seem as though Android is an _incredibly_ difficult platform to make money on though. This site has been littered with complaints (& plenty of iOS- vs-Android posts) about the dev process and lack of buyer activity.

I've actually found myself buying more than I otherwise would have, as a result of this sentiment. I want to support Android dev, and my credit card seems like the most logical way to do that.

Funnily enough, I've never even considered the Amazon market. I wonder what type of people do...

<comment><USER7> A large part of the problem is the "race to the bottom" mentality. Users have been taught (by Apple) that software is $0.99 - if not free. You have to get massive user numbers before that becomes profitable, or find another way out of the trap.

Google's Market is pretty good, and there's always the option of self- distributing (Swype does this and it is still very popular).

I wouldn't use Amazon's App Store after reading things like this. It's less usable for customers and it takes a lot out of the developer's control. However, I've seen developers handling this very badly. For example, they get shocked by the way the Free App promotion works (starting with the fact that it's FREE) and then try to remove the app from the store and deny those customers all further access to updates and the ability to reinstall (which may be wanted reasonably often if you use custom firmware). I don't care if you sold it for $0 or if you got burned by Amazon, that's still a bit of a bait-and-switch.

<comment><USER6> The 'race to the bottom' on pricing diesn't seem to have hit the Android market in the same way as the iOS app store, from what I've seen.

I've not had any difficulty justifying paying more for an app/game, thanks mainly to the 15 minute refund window.

Bad handling on the developer's part is a valid complaint alright. I'm sure it's frustrating and painful to have to support potentially large numbers of users (note: not customers) for no gain whatsoever. That, along with the obviously lacking editorial control to respond to troubled users is a glaring red flag to steer clear of the system.

<comment><USER7> Users, customers - if you do a free promotion, you're doing a business transaction with them. It's not like they went and hunted up a rogue APK.

15 minute refund is usually good enough to run the "does this work on my device" check, although it doesn't always cut it if there are network issues or if something crashes or what have you. I'd be more comfortable buying more casually if it was longer, but it's much better than not having it. (Another reason not to buy from Amazon.)

<comment><USER6> Users/Customers: I agree that they're the same thing in this case. I just don't like how the enormous volume of the free users, compared to the tiny number of paid ones, has resulted in them having to up their actual hardware costs just to support the system as a result of this :(

<comment><USER7> Yeah. It's often a poor value proposition and can cause a lot of negative fallout if you aren't prepared for and planning to exploit the numbers it generates (see also: Groupon).

It would be very interesting to see what big-ticket participants thought of the process (e.g. Angry Birds, Plants vs. Zombies).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I imagine if Amazon had to reimburse developers for any non-zero amount this would be bad for business. It sounds like they're in this "free app a day" thing for the long-haul.

It also seems to me that what the developer is getting for this is a free day of advertising. So if someone tries your app who normally wouldn't have because it's prominently displayed on the top of the screen and they like it they might buy the next version or other apps from you.</comment>


Defending Android - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/15/precious-bodily-patents/

<comment><USER2> I don't have a problem necessarily with what the article is trying to paint - Motorola acquisition, like many other complex decisions involving lot of factors, can go either way for Google. But that's not the interesting part.

To get at the likelihood of best case and worst case you can't put out the unknowns and assume each unknown is likely to have a bad outcome and then conclude with fear uncertainty and doubt.

One such unknown is credibility of Motorola's patents. Scratch Florian Mueller and MG doesn't know squat about this. No one but Google's lawyers do. In so far as Google's lawyers are not idiots in spending $12.5B on the patents without having some plan on utilizing/monetizing them AND Motorola has actually not lost a patent lawsuit against Microsoft or Apple _yet_ and/or they aren't paying royalties to them yet, it is premature to conclude that Motorola's patents won't go far enough. That's exactly what MG says is likely to be the case.

Then there is the bias, that makes MG again rely on something insubstantial and unverifiable - How the PR notes of various Android OEMs were worded. MG claims that makes the Android OEMs look disingenuous. Less professional, may be - but disingenuous? I don't think so. Patent royalties are a threat to the OEMs and they know it well. If Google could put a patent pool up that they start with 25000 patents and growing and it convinces other manufacturers to contribute to it under the OHA - it benefits the OEM immensely and they know it. What is the other alternative for the OEMs? Go Windows Phone 7? Nice idea but it hasn't made a dent yet and if it does they can be sure to pay what Microsoft damn well demands - including choking their own throats with exclusive licensing agreements. For the OEMs it is clearly in their best interest to go where Google wants them to go. And Motorola for them was always a competitor - that hasn't changed with the acquisition.

Here is another nonsensical thing - MG says Google will be forced to make Motorola design better phones/tablets and that will mean they play partial to Motorola. He ignores the fact that Google is all about more handsets running Android. And Motorola isn't even remotely capable of addressing even 1/3rd of the potential smartphone market worldwide - Google needs HTC/ZTE/Samsung to fill in. Badly. There is just no way Google will want to even try to screw over them. And the OEMs can always up their game and compete well with Motorola on hardware, software update frequency, price and features. That doesn't change. Bottom line? Little incentive for Google to screw over the OEMs and little to no new adverse impact of Motorola to the OEMs.

I wasn't expecting MG to write anything insightful but he asserted at the start of the article that he wasn't going to go all Dan Lyons and start opening his mouth to talk without understanding - so here.

</comment><comment><USER3> We are in the midst of the intellectual property Cold War, and it's fascinating to watch. If Google can use Motorola's patents to balance the power in patent suits and avoid $20/device in licensing fees... well, they're activating 550k devices per day, so that's $11M/day in savings. Roughly 3 years to break-even on that basis alone.

Google can use Motorola to force the issues that have plagued Android for a while. Motorola devices will probably become "pure Android" devices like the Nexus series, pushing carriers to abandon the crapware and carrier-specific UIs they're infatuated with.

Most people I know with Motorola Android devices say the build quality is for crap. I hope Google can improve this, but if not, I hope they can at least get the carriers to quit layering garbage on HTC's nice hardware.

<comment><USER4> _> We are in the midst of the intellectual property Cold War, and it's fascinating to watch._

I find it sad to watch. Any hope of patent reform in the US got a lot bleaker in 2011 due to the billions being spent on defensive portfolios, especially in the mobile space. There's no way these companies are going to let any legislation pass that invalidates their 'investments'. The best we seem to be able to hope for is that Google uses theirs defensively only, or adds them to copyleft-style patent pools like openinventionnetwork.com or openpatents.org. I harbor little hope that Apple or MS would do the same.

<comment><USER5> Couldn't they see patent reform as a way of avoiding having to spend billions more in the future? I suppose it depends on whether each company sees the patent game as a cost or a profit center.

<comment><USER6> Yep, a company that only uses patents defensively (Google, so far) would have nothing to lose by invalidating software/business patents as a whole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Citing Florian Mueller as an authority on anything destroys any credibility the article might have had otherwise.

<comment><USER6> Which version of ad hominem is this?

<comment><USER7> It's an opinion piece. Credibility of sources counts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What is interesting is that the patent defense isn't just about Android... Motorola has a bunch of video patents that are now not problems for WebM. Given the MPEG-LA patent pool, probably not much that can be asserted for MAD, but they've at least defused a number of bombs previously pointed at WebM users.

<comment><USER9> >Motorola has a bunch of video patents

Motorola Mobility or Motorola Solutions?

<comment><USER8> Mobility. They go with the STB and video distribution businesses, IIRC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _this is either the smartest thing Google has ever done, or the dumbest._

I've said that to myself many times. I've never had it (whatever "it" is) be the smartest thing I've ever done. To be fair, it is rarely the dumbest, either, though it tends to favor that.

If you find yourself thinking a choice will be this polar in outcome, you are probably making the wrong decision.

For the record, I don't think MG is right about this being the (binary) smartest or dumbest decision for Google.

<comment><USER4> Is MG ever insightful about anything? I'm not a regular reader, but every time I do read his articles, I feel the deja-vu of reading game console fanboy forum 'debates' from the early 2000s.

That line about smartest or dumbest is silly, not the least b/c it could be both at different times (maybe a terrible idea now, but turns out to be a brilliant one five years from now, or vice versa).

How'd he get that job with Techcrunch again?

<comment><USER11> You did read it, didn't you? That's why he got that job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> These sorts of developments must really bring hope to the masses of underemployed law grads I've been hearing about.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, strike two for patent reform. Billions being spent on patent portfolios + a glut of law school graduates = not good for legislation that could bring sanity to patents.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does doing what your users say they want ultimately end in betrayal? - <AUTHOR>

You know the story.  You listen to your users and do exactly what they say they want.  You implement the features they want and you always keep their input in the process. From polls to surveys to comments - everything you make goes by the user.  Sounds good in the surface, right?
That is until some company who completely ignores their user and does what they think is correct comes along (say Apple).  Now the users you've been taking care of since the beginning have left your products in droves.
What happened?  Why did they leave?  You did everything they said but they still left.  What's going on here? <comment><USER2> My perspective is you should listen to what your users say, but treat that as just one piece of input into what you do.

Ie, rather than this:

what we do = what users tell us

It should be:

what we do = f(what users tell us, x)

Where f is your own thinking, and x is other sources of useful data.

My feeling is that "vision" and "data" aren't in conflict -- you should attempt to integrate data into an over-riding vision, but you should be prepared to ditch or tweak the vision if it becomes too detached from reality.

I could write a lot more about this -- I think the problem goes a bit deeper than "faster horse" dynamics that some people have mentioned. The whole lean startup, listen to your customers thing is supposed to be about applying the scientific method to founding companies.

Trying out random things and recording the results might be "experimenting" in the normal sense, but it's not the scientific meaning of experimenting. You should concoct a theory and work out what you need to look for before you start looking. The Lean Startup book itself goes into a lot of depth about which metrics to track, how different marketing models require different metrics, etc (everyone thinks they know "lean concepts" because they read a few blog posts but the book goes into way more depth).

</comment><comment><USER3> Can't say I can name a company that has happened to. Do you have any examples in mind?

Here are a couple of ideas.

If you ask users how to make X better they will suggest incremental changes to X. When you phrase the question "How do we improve the current solution to a problem" you rarely get a different solution. You quite often get an incremental improvement to the solution. Notice how you have quit focusing on the problem, and started focusing on your solution? It rather binds what you are willing to consider in the future.

The second is doing whatever your customers want is even worse than design by committee, it is design by a committee that doesn't interact or have the same general goals. A Feature set should provide a clear an concise vision. Committees rarely have that, and random people suggesting things certainly don't.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sometimes users are unaware of what they want and it takes another company (Apple) to come along and show them what they really want.

</comment><comment><USER5> Steve Blank had a fantastic post about this you might want to take the time to read.

[http://steveblank.com/2012/02/27/killing-your-startup-by- lis...](http://steveblank.com/2012/02/27/killing-your-startup-by-listening-to- customers/)</comment>


Recent version of Handbrake download infected with malware - <AUTHOR> https://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=36364 <comment><USER2> Something similar has happened with Transmission's download DMGs being replaced on their servers [1] (twice! [2]) in recent memory.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11234589](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11234589)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12403768](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12403768)

<comment><USER3> The original developer of Transmission and Handbrake are the same IIRC. I hope this is just a coincidence.

<comment><USER4> Coincidence seems unlikely, doesn't it? Same compromised admin level password, or same vector/hole in 2 places seems likely to me.

<comment><USER5> Could be the same hacker just continuing to prod his lazy security practices. Or exploiting existing knowledge of his systems to bypass new layers.

Or he exposed himself on criminal hacking forums as an easy mark. But this is purely baseless conjecture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm going to take this opportunity to plug my favourite open source project - the Nix package manager[1].

It can work as a universal homebrew replacement (works on MacOS, Linux, WSL and can be easily ported to most BSD variants), comes with a huge collection of packages[2] and produces _its own reproducible source builds_. Like homebrew, it's a hybrid source and binary based package manager (if you haven't done anything to modify the build, it will likely be downloaded from a cache of pre-built binaries[3]). Unlike something like homebrew-cask, it will never download the pre-built .dmg file from the developer's website - with the obvious exception of proprietary software.

It can also work as a great AUR/ports replacement on Linux systems. Fedora doesn't provide FFmpeg or an up-to-date version of a package you need? No problem, just get it from Nix! All the advantages of a rolling release distro, without actually having to use one.

Due to its functional nature, it comes with a wealth of advantages over homebrew and other traditional package managers[4]. Once you get past the learning curve, creating your own packages or modifying existing ones is a breeze. It can create disposable development environments with dependencies of whatever project you're working on, without having to install them in your system or user profile! Check out the Nix manual[5] for more information.

It's so flexible that people have built a Linux distribution where your entire system configuration is a Nix derivation (package) - with atomic upgrades, rollbacks, reproducible configuration and much more! [6]

[1] [https://nixos.org/nix/](https://nixos.org/nix/)

[2] [https://nixos.org/nixos/packages.html](https://nixos.org/nixos/packages.html)

[3] [https://hydra.nixos.org/](https://hydra.nixos.org/)

[4] [https://nixos.org/nix/about.html](https://nixos.org/nix/about.html)

[5] [https://nixos.org/nix/manual/](https://nixos.org/nix/manual/)

[6] [https://nixos.org/nixos/about.html](https://nixos.org/nixos/about.html)

<comment><USER7> If we're plugging functional package management, we may as well mention the other significant project in this space - Guix:

[https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/download/](https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/download/)

Essentially, all the benefits touted above apply here, but it is worth noting that Guix is a younger project. The author was originally a Nix dev, but found the DSL to be too awkward to use in practice, and opted to use Scheme through and through. Yes, Emacs bindings are available.

Also, Guix can now produce Dockerfiles, if that floats your boat:

[https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/news/creating-bundles- with...](https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/news/creating-bundles-with-guix- pack.html)

<comment><USER8> So Haskell users use NixOS and Scheme users use Guix?

<comment><USER9> It's not Haskell, strictly speaking. There are some weird global state mutations in NixOS (I.e. the pkgs object) that aren't as intuitive as you'd like. Also, the novel file structure makes composing packages that aren't already built to do so quite difficult. Trying to get eclimd to work with emacs and eclipse was a giant pain.

<comment><USER10> There are no global state mutations in `pkgs`. All immutable parts are in `impure.nix`, which already has a complete `pkgs`.

Maybe you are confusing state mutations with fixed points, which are used extensively (thankfully).

<comment><USER9> There are no global state mutations in pkgs until you need a custom package, and then you're overriding the global state with your own custom state.

<comment> vertex-four That does not modify global state - it creates a new state from the old one + your modifications.

<comment><USER11> In other words, it modifies global state.

<comment> vertex-four I expect that your issue is more with the fact that there is a mega state object that contains almost everything - not that it is somehow global, which it isn't. You can't access it unless it is passed to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Did the author not sign the binary?[1] Why not?

Is it really just because of the $99/yr developer program fee? And if so.. is it starting to sound like a better value now?

[1] [https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Se...](https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Security/Conceptual/CodeSigningGuide/Introduction/Introduction.html)

<comment><USER13> $99 for Apple, $300+ for Windows. It adds up. I suspect Handbrake gets plenty of donations, but most projects don't. Heaven help you if you want to build a signed driver for Windows.

<comment><USER14> $300 for Windows? Where does that come from? Submitting to the Store should handle the signing for you (not that I know if it does).

<comment><USER15> I think this is for signing arbitrary EXEs. I'd always been curious how that worked, TIL it's that expensive though :(

<comment><USER16> It's peanuts to distribute your software to millions of people.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, fair point. I guess I was erroneously looking at that from the standpoint of the financial scale I'm working with right now (don't have a job, etc) and didn't catch myself. (Hmm. I'll keep an eye on that.)

If distributing a commercial (or enterprise) application then yeah it's peanuts (or a rounding error). Good point.

<comment><USER16> Related story about app stores.

There was a time when distributing content on Steam was free and anyone could do it.

This resulted in a lot of shit stuff, copied materials and fraud being distributed.

They introduced a $100 publication fee. As the story goes, it was very effective to stop abuse.

<comment><USER15> Interesting tidbit to file away, thanks.

Irrefutable point though - it's one thing to want something for free as a consumer, but quite a different story as a creator or developer. I totally get the rationale behind charging to keep quality high.

Charging also creates a contract and with that contract be able to enforce a minimum standard. That helps greatly too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> God dammit. I downloaded this a few days ago and sure enough, I'm infected. What are reasonable mitigation steps to prevent this in the future? I noticed handbrake said it must "install additional codecs" which is mighty odd, but I didn't think much of it at the time.

Is there a security product on OSX that would have prevented this?

<comment><USER18> _Is there a security product on OSX that would have prevented this?_

Little Flocker. Unfortunately, it was sold to F-Secure [1].

 _I 'm infected_

Personally, I would wipe the whole system (rather than just removing the malware as in the steps that they describe) and change all credentials (passwords, SSH keys, etc.).

[1] [https://9to5mac.com/2017/04/06/little-flocker- acquisition/](https://9to5mac.com/2017/04/06/little-flocker-acquisition/)

<comment><USER17> Ironically-- the reason I didn't have little flocker installed... I had just wiped my machine. When I reinstalled (the reason I redownloaded HB), flocker was on longer available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> " Further Actions Required

Based on the information we have, you must also change all the passwords that may reside in your OSX KeyChain or any browser password stores."

That sounds like a very large exercise...

<comment><USER20> One very good reason to not rely on password managers...

That is not to say that there are many good reason to do so, but the password manager do become a very coveted target.

edit: Maybe I phrased that badly. It is a risk associated with password managers that everyone that are using one should be aware of.

<comment><USER21> What's the alternative? Using different passwords for every account is not practical without some way to store them, and using the same password makes you even more vulnerable. We could write them all down in a big book or something, but that leaves us vulnerable to physical theft and loss.

<comment><USER22> Two options come to mind, neither perfect, but options.

1\. Use a password pattern. Something like 8 random digits that you memorize and then part of the domain name or business name. Such as "goo" for google. Put them in whatever order you like. Now you've memorized one pattern but use a unique password everywhere.

2\. Use a predictable algorithm instead of a password. Their are web based services for this. You enter the domain name and then "encode" it to a password. That is typically not reversible.

These fall down some when you have to change a password or when a system has requirements that don't match your password (like requiring a number or symbol). Other users will mention other limitations as well.

<comment><USER23> That is an interesting idea. echo URL + password | sha/md5

Should be hard to crack and easy to remember.

Can anyone who actually knows this thing chime in?

<comment><USER18> _That is an interesting idea. echo URL + password | sha /md5_

There are 'stateless' password managers that work that way. It does not really protect against malware. If your user account is compromised by malware, what holds them from reading out your password and applying the same procedure to obtain password for interesting sites? You'll still be updating your password everywhere.

What you want is a second factor that uses a challenge-response mechanism with user interaction (e.g. U2F Yubikeys that require a finger press to start the challenge-response).

<comment><USER24> They can't. Prove me otherwise.

Even if they have plaintext password (which is often not case), this is just shasum. Feel free to guess which password (and which exactly scheme) I used to generate my password for news.ycombinator.com, if (of course it's now not like that :) it is:

bb05f766a74e6bf722136eaca97d9beb1fcc8f59d47c2d9e6eb1667d57c4cb82

You have now (after hacking whole hackernews db) access to my password ONLY for the hackersnews. Which was the original goal of the method: to use different passwords at different sites, which if compromised (password), do not reveal scheme used to generate it for different sites.

<comment><USER18> _bb05f766a74e6bf722136eaca97d9beb1fcc8f59d47c2d9e6eb1667d57c4cb82_

That's not the point. The malware would have access to your complete machine, possibly with root privileges, what holds them from reading your master password with a keylogger when you type it in?

It does not provide more security against trojans than a password manager.

<comment><USER24> You didnt read my reply nor the parent thread.

I was replying solely and only to the acusation that after revealing plain text password on _one_ site (which was generated using said scheme) you disclose every one.

This is simply not true.

In addition (but I didnt address that), there is no single keychain/password store to steal by the trojan. I can use it anywhere, using only my head as a 'storage' machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Looks like the XProton malware is a RAT.

Full description here:

[https://www.cybersixgill.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/02/0207...](https://www.cybersixgill.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/02/02072017%20-%20Proton%20-%20A%20New%20MAC%20OS%20RAT%20-%20Sixgill%20Threat%20Report.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER26> I don't understand how I'm supposed to verify the checksum if I've already installed (and run) the HandBrake.app ... and long since deleted the .dmg installer file ????

<comment><USER27> You aren't. They describe how to check your system for the Trojan if you've already run the installer.

<comment><USER26> well aren't I the idiot

<comment><USER28> No worries, happens to most of us ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think the main concern here is the state of GUI apps in macOS and Windows. Popular apps in these platforms are mostly closed-source, even for personal side projects. For the few open source GUI apps, no package manager provides support for building GUI apps from source. I wish package managers would make it easier to build GUI apps from source, or even provide their own binary packages for GUI apps. I really feel reluctant to install most GUI apps on macOS and Windows because I can't trust that the build/distribution platforms for these apps are properly secured.

<comment><USER30> Being open source isn't going to stop someone replacing a download on a hacked server.

Also, the package manager you're after is brew, specifically 'brew cask', which installs GUI apps.

EDIT: By the way, building from source doesn't stop someone replacing the source package the package manager uses. Sure you can look at the code in the package, but are you going to? It's more likely you'd check the code on Github, if at all.

<comment><USER29> I'm mostly worried about the security of the build/distribution platform, which is why I would would prefer a reputable package manager to provide binaries built and distributed using their own infrastructure. If this isn't feasible, better support for building from source would at least ensure that the binaries are correct, provided that your own computer isn't compromised.

Homebrew Cask currently can't address this kind of situation, since the binary is still built and distributed from non-reputable sources.

The correctness of the source code itself is surely a problem, but it's better than having to trust random binaries built and distributed from non-reputable sources.

<comment><USER31> The leakyness here was the Dev, would likely be the Dev again, just pre-github

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> A working link: [https://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=36364](https://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=36364)

<comment><AUTHOR> In case the site goes down: [http://imgur.com/a/I6gpB](http://imgur.com/a/I6gpB)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Usually package managers on linux distros, to use an example for comparison, tend to check checksums of downloads for security purposes during any installation. For MacOS users, I guess I understand they want to use software not blessed by Apple, then isn't homebrew or whatever supposed to do the same thing?

<comment><USER21> Most Mac users don't use anything like Homebrew. Typically you just download the software as a .zip file or equivalent, unpack it, and run it.

Apple does support code signatures for apps downloaded this way through their Developer ID program, but you have to pay $99/year to be a member of their developer program in order to do so.

In theory, you could still sign downloads using a code signing certificate you got elsewhere, but system wouldn't check it for you, and few people would bother to do it manually.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you have Gatekeeper enabled(which it is by default), the system prevents the user from running random unsigned apps.

<comment><USER21> You can't turn Gatekeeper off anymore, at least not without using the command line. You can bypass it on an app-by-app basis by just right-clicking an app and selecting "Open" there, which is what you'd have to do if you're downloading apps like Handbrake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Yikes. Missed this by 1 day. I updated Handbrake to 1.0.7 on 1st May to compress a bunch of videos. Was a little surprised to see it wasn't signed but after scanning it with ClamXav I figured I was safe and installed it on every Mac in the house so I could crank through my project faster.

If I understand correctly even if I had in fact downloaded the compromised version ClamXav wouldn't have detected the malware?

This kind of stuff is extremely worrying and really strengthens Apple's case for signed application binaries across the board.

Are package managers like Homebrew and MacPorts not also susceptible to this kind of binary poisoning?

</comment><comment><USER28> I can't believe this. I literally downloaded handbrake like 45 minutes ago! Luckily I got the proper version, but boy oh boy, it was a close call. I think I'll reinstall claXmav on all my macs.

<comment><USER35> The real problem is that you're trusting binaries you find on disparate websites.

If you want to avoid these sorts of compromises, use a package manager or check the hash of the downloaded file against one that you trust.

<comment><USER36> HomeBrew Cask updated the hash to the infected one, so in this case it has been useless.

<comment><USER37> If you look at the history for handbrake in cask, it looks like it was first updated to 1.0.7 with the correct hash, then later the hash was changed with no version bump, and then reverted. That's crazy! Why didn't alarm bells go off when the hash changed? [https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew- cask/commits/master/Cas...](https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew- cask/commits/master/Casks/handbrake.rb)

<comment><USER38> What the absolute heck. Literally just the hash was updated yet the version stayed the same: [https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew- cask/commit/461af7672fa...](https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew- cask/commit/461af7672fa267ed42bd5572c20bf337cb4da87e#diff-d2016e0c3103c7993f5cec00fd000a23)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> There's a quick analysis of it here: [https://objective- see.com/blog/blog_0x1D.html](https://objective-see.com/blog/blog_0x1D.html)

Along with the fact that Apple updated the built-in sorta-antivirus in MacOS to detect it. But it only detects an SHA1 hash on the original DMG. If someone rebuilds the DMG or puts the malware with another app and builds a DMG, it'll bypass the MacOS sorta-antivirus.

<comment><USER40> >HandBrake needs to install additional codecs. Enter your password to allow this.

Interesting, the malware creates a phishing-ish popup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Aren't the dmgs digitally signed?

<comment><USER42> The legitimate version of Handbrake is not signed, at least not in the standard Apple way. I know a cert costs some money, but well, this is why they exist and why the latest versions of MacOS have hard-to-override warnings.

<comment><USER43> Perhaps we need a letsencrypt for signing packages on walled-garden systems.

<comment><USER44> Code signing requires some verification that you are who you say you are in the real world so there is an additional cost.

<comment><USER43> Not necessarily. For issues like the one discussed in this thread, a simple ssh-style "trust initially" would have sufficed, and would have prevented the malicious installer from running.

Note that I'm not proposing this as a replacement for the current cert system (which you pay into), but as a replacement for unsigned executables.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> What about creating different users on a MacOS system to do different things? Wouldn't this mitigate exploits like this?

Why shouldn't I create a "Tommy Transcoder" user on my system? That user would have the Handbrake app in his own Application folder. I assume that Handbrake will run correctly without needing to be installed in the system /Applications?

I already do this for a few items of software. Maybe it should be SOP to do this for most/all software?

Or what about installing most apps into virtual machines and using VMWare to run them?

I do recognize that such an approach couldn't be used universally. E.g. VMWare itself must run on the native machine, and with elevated privileges.

I'm interested in "defense in depth". No single technique can defend against all possible exploits.

</comment><comment><USER46> The SHA hash of the dmg file is useless. Who still keeps the dmg file? I need a way to verify the app itself is compromised.

</comment><comment><USER47> Did this affect Handbrake installs that were checking for updates or only newly downloaded installs?

</comment><comment><USER48> Didn't this also happen somewhat recently? How can this be prevented? The window could be reduced by actively monitoring mirrors? Could BitTorrent help mitigate this because the torrent file validates data and isn't under the control of the parties?

<comment><AUTHOR> This could have been prevented by hosting downloads on a reputable site(Github), instead of developer's own PHP backend.

Software like [https://github.com/google/santa](https://github.com/google/santa) can help, especially if you're doing IT in a large enterprise.

The feed used by the software's autoupdate framework(sparkle) was signed, so that would've prevented bad downloads through autoupdate.

<comment><USER49> Hosting on GitHub solves one problem, but creates another.

Chrome for example has a sort of a bloom filter which is used to check all downloaded executables. This will raise a nasty warning if the thing you downloaded is not a "popular" download.

For obvious reason, this check is disabled for a bunch of sites, like github, sf, ...

I know for a fact that some malware authors host their stuff on GitHub exactly to bypass this Chrome check.

<comment><USER50> Do you have any more info about this? I've downloaded random executables from a lot of unpopular (and in some cases, newly created by me) sites and never seen anything pop up in chrome warning me not to download it.

<comment><USER49> Information is scarce on this (a little bit of security through obscurity).

Here is theirs blog post introducing the feature in 2012: [https://chrome.googleblog.com/2012/02/faster-browsing- safer-...](https://chrome.googleblog.com/2012/02/faster-browsing-safer- downloading.html)

> Chrome also does checks on executable files (like ".exe" and ".msi" files). > If the executable doesn't match a whitelist, Chrome checks with Google for > more information, such as whether the website you're accessing hosts a high > number of malicious downloads.

At the time I looked at the implementation in the Chrome source code, but I remember that it took me a while to locate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> How does this happen? Even if installed, doesn't Mac's secure operating system prevent user programs from accessing passwords?

<comment><USER52> The malware uses social engineering to obtain root.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> The most important bit of the advice - change all your passwords in keychain.

To coin a phrase - oh shit

</comment><comment><USER54> > The Download Mirror Server is going to be completely rebuilt from scratch.

Am I alone in thinking that this is irresponsible? Why not move releases to github?

Why aren't you going to start signing macOS binaries? I find this offensive. Thanks for potentially compromising users because you couldn't be arsed to pay for a certificate.

<comment><USER39> Please feel free to donate the funds necessary to cover the Apple ID signup for multiple years as well as the potentially necessary Apple hardware to install the SDK on and sign the app (since Apple artificially restricts code signing to only run on their own hardware) as well as any necessary training hours to the team to setup said environment so that they can sign the software they're giving to you for free.

<comment><USER55> It's $100 for the signing and $500 for a Mac Mini. Any professional software developer would make that kind of money in a few days. And I would bet that an open source project as big as this gets at least that amount in donations yearly. It's completely irresponsible to not sign releases after something like this happens.

<comment><USER39> And if they did get $600 in donations in the last year... they should dedicate all of that to the Mac build? Even if they've already spent those funds on hosting and other expenses?

A user of a free product telling the developer of said free product how the developer should be spending the money that said user isn't giving them takes a special kind of entitlement.

<comment><USER56> Hold on… your premise doesn't make sense. Apple's SDK only officially runs on Mac - but that applies to the entire build process, not just codesigning. Anyone who is already producing a Mac build either has access to a Mac build host, which they can also use to sign, or is using third party tools to cross- compile from another OS.

In the latter case, there is also a third party tool capable of signing binaries:

[https://github.com/saucelabs/isign](https://github.com/saucelabs/isign)

You do need to pay the $99/year for the certificate, but it shouldn't be necessary to buy hardware just to sign things.

<comment><USER39> It's worth noting that you need access to a Mac you can trust to setup your Apple developer credentials on as well as iSign and then export your credentials and certificate from each time you get a new certificate. It's likely you won't be able to do this in the Apple store. While you or I may have a colleague or trusted friend we could do this with, many developers will not.

<comment><USER56> It does say that in the readme, but I don't think it's actually necessary: you can get certificates and provisioning profiles through the web portal without going through Xcode. (For certificates, it has you upload a standard CSR file.) Though developers may not know that…

Admittedly, if you don't have a Mac build machine, (a) you can't test your builds, and (b) you can't use the official SDK (including, e.g., system header files) without violating the terms of service. Not that many people care about that, but if you don't mind ToS violations you may as well just install pirated macOS in a VM (which is easy enough in practice). Perhaps Apple deserves blame for not having a legal way to run a macOS VM on non-Apple hardware; certainly it makes life harder for open-source developers that want to play by the rules. Still, these obstacles have nothing to do with signing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Sigh.. This could be somewhat repaired by making a beta-release, distributing to devs and testers. Once confirmed good, rename file and release via IPFS. The key here, is if multiple devs did this, the hashsum would _prove_ the file being shared.

Any one client that's been hacked or infected would show up as an improper hash and easily spotted.

<comment><USER6> hindsight is always 20/20

i'm sure <insert your favourite open source project here> would appreciate patches for reproducible, cryptographically signed releases</comment></comment>


FaceTime will be successful because you don't need an account - <AUTHOR> http://sachin.posterous.com/facetime-in-iphone-4

<comment><USER2> This is interesting because it shows how far behind the US is in the telecoms space.

In Europe this has been a basic feature of all 3G phones for around five years. If you want to videochat you just press the button and call somebody up using their normal phonenumber.

It was pretty hyped up, but it never really caught on because there simply aren't that many usecases where you want to videochat with people on the go. Especially as you have to hold out your phone in fromt of you in a somewhat awkward way. Now it's just old and tired.

<comment><USER3> Over WiFi instead of 3G is somewhat of a novelty though, but still, the problem with video conversations isn't technical, it's that most people do not want to do them.

I remember six years ago when 3 launched over here and tried to convince everyone and their mother that video calls were the future. I had some colleagues who got their phones, and I saw them use the video call once, maybe twice, only for testing. I also remember seeing some people do video calls on the subway.

It all quickly stopped though as soon as people realized the drawbacks of video calls for everyday conversations and now you never see it, even though all phones have the capability.

<comment><USER2> Over WiFi is a novelty - but it's also a hack to get around the fact that the US carriers are way behind Europe and Asia.

<comment><USER3> Oh, I just assumed the US went through the same cycle of consumer disinterest as the rest of us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "iPhones then create a direct peer to peer connection over the internet. The iPhones deal with all IP addresses, firewalls, NAT issues automatically."

Isn't that impossible without an intermediate server?

Edit: OK, thinking a bit, I never looked into the Skype trick much, but I would guess, send a request to a server (that doesn't respond). Then you have an open connection/port listening to the response from the server. If you can tell the other party about that "hole", it can send a packet across the firewall.

While for Skype that is done by a server (if necessary), the iPhone could send the information via the phone line?

As I said, no idea how the details work, just a rough idea. Or maybe they just use a server.

<comment><USER5> If there is an intermediate server involved (probably a STUN server), it just helps set up the connection. The actual UDP packets don't go through any middle man. This is how residential VoIP services have been working without requiring any firewall/router configuration by the customer. It's also the same thing when you set up an iChat or Skype video call with both parties being behind a NAT.

<comment><USER6> Yes, it uses STUN - you can see it on the keynote slides when he listed the standards used.

By the way, this article makes it sound like Posterous invented the concept of not having accounts? Even though it was obviously invented by 2channel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You do need an account, but it's with Apple.

<comment><USER8> Right. They said they use SIP for this, which does require an account. I assume Apple/AT&T are automapping phone numbers to SIP accounts.

SIP video phones have been on the market for years already.

<comment><USER9> Can you share a link which explains the details of Apple using SIP for this?

<comment><USER8> I don't think there is one yet. Just this slide showing that they're using a bunch of VOIP protocols to implement it:

[http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/06/apple-...](http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/06/apple- wwdc-2010-384-rm-eng.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hm, looks like the FaceTime button replaces the "Hold" button on the call screen. Is it still possible to place FaceTime-capable callers on hold?

</comment><comment><USER5> It will be _really_ successful when you can video chat with any device whether it's an iPhone, Mac, Windows, Android, anything. And when it works over 3G.

<comment><USER3> No it won't be successful this time either. The reason video calls aren't replacing voice calls has never been technical, it's always been social.

<comment><USER11> I make video calls all the time via Skype with both friends and family. The reasons I never picked up phone video calls was because 1) they rarely worked properly, 2) they required compatible handsets (see 1), 3) they were several times more expensive than normal voice calls.

This solves all 3 of these problems. Almost everyone I care to talk to (other than my parents) has an iPhone and will be getting the iPhone 4.

<comment><USER3> Video calls have their (limited) uses, but they will never be succesful, they will never overtake voice calls, and Apple has shown _absolutely nothing_ that hasn't been available for years in Europe or Asia.

We've had 3G video calls for years. Almost all cellphones except the bottom range have it, all carriers support it, there has been massive advertising campaigns and hype about it when it was introduced, it was the whole _point_ of switching to 3G, and yet it's a massive flop.

I'm sure you and your friends will be very happy getting it, there are always exceptions, but video calls will never surpass voice calls in mass-market popularity, they won't even come close.

<comment><USER11> Did anyone claim video calls would surpass voice calls? I don't think even Apple made such a claim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have a sneaky suspicion they might be pinging some switchboard with self- reported telephone numbers... and thus there could be some privacy blowback (mapping phone numbers to mobile IPs) or potential for phone-number impersonation (at least until you show your face) in FaceTime.

<comment><USER9> I don't see why you would suspect such a thing. All iphones already have a unique identifier, and the device is associated with your itunes account. So, Apple has all the information they need to authenticate you.

I can see no evidence in the facts that they are following the model that you stated.

<comment><USER12> A 'sneaky suspicion' means it's derived from my slightly-paranoid intuition, not extant facts. We'll see!

(Maybe Gizmodo will get some jailbreak pro to make one of their phones selfidentify as Jonny Ive's, then crank-FaceTime Steve Jobs. Or maybe not.)</comment></comment></comment>


Text-only dot matrix LCD animation - <AUTHOR> http://cubiq.org/text-only-dot-matrix-lcd-animation

<comment><USER2> > opacity = (1 + wolfAni[currentFrame][i]) / 10;

This could be pre-calculated.

>if(opacity != matrix[i].style.opacity); matrix[i].style.opacity = opacity

That semicolon after the 'if' means the next line will always be executed regardless of the value of the condition, so the if is useless there.

\-- In the same spirit, I love the AA-Project[1], especially their demo, BB[2]. Now _that_ is fast.

[1]: <http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/index.html> [2]: <http://aa- project.sourceforge.net/bb/>

</comment><comment><USER3> In Firefox 5.0, the animation ran very slowly, 1 fps , not exactly the result he was looking for. Not sure if that is a browser issue, or an implementation issue.

<comment><USER4> Smooth on iPad 2 using iCab browser, though took sometimes 1 - 2 seconds for character change radio to be picked up.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: DigitalOcean Destroyed All My Data, Any Legal Recourse? - <AUTHOR> I will follow up with a long post documenting timeline etc and all correspondence with them (it's not that much since they never respond). I have been a (paying) DigitalOcean user for more than 2 years for personal projects, and recently convinced a start-up that I work for in Tokyo to move off of Heroku and onto Digital Ocean. Everything fine for 2 months, then all of a sudden I get user reports that the site is down. I check and my account is locked and all it says is to submit a support ticket. No warnings of an issue, not even a mail saying that they turned off instances etc, just silently they lock my account. I submit a ticket and they don't resopnd for a week, I submit another, finally after 5 weeks, yes 5 weeks, I get a response saying that I login from too many locations and the lock is now removed, but they destroyed all instances. How can this even be anything close to standard practice to without warning destroy all instances of a paying user for over 2 years?! All databases everything completely gone forever. I guess this goes to show why you should always not trust 1 cloud provider, but this is just so incredible to me that they can on a whim without warning or justification just destroy all your data, is there any legal recourse against this? <comment><USER2> If the contract (terms of service) you agreed to with the provider says they can nuke your data without notifying you, there may be nothing you can do. If the contract doesn't allow them to do that, you could consult a lawyer to see if this constitutes a breach of contract or negligence. (But if the contract has a forced arbitration clause, you won't be able to sue them.)

In any case, this is a horrible thing for a business to do to a paying customer.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sure, you can always sue. I have no idea what your chance of winning is, though.

I want to caution other commenters that many of these stories have turned out to not be what they first appear.

</comment><comment><USER4> I am a bit skeptical of this account. Every time I have contacted DigitalOcean support they respond quickly usually within hours.

If this service was successful and profitable, I can't imagine waiting 5 weeks. I'd be in full nerd rage after 1/2 day of being down, and would be spinning up new servers on another provider.

Curious to see the full post though before jumping to more conclusions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, I have contacted them before over the 2 years and always they responded quickly. They responded w/in 24hrs and said that someone from "security and trust" team would review and get back to me, and that response took 5 weeks. So I guess at the point they already destroyed your instances they assume they lost you as a customer and don't really care anymore to get back to you in a timely manner.

I did go into full nerd rage because I can't believe they would do this to a startup, I had the critical stuff running in <1hr on Linode, but took a day for everything to be rebuilt since I had to redo everything w/out access to backups or images.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Talk to your lawyer. I'm not sure what the point of this post is. If it's a PSA/warning, then you need to provide more proof. If you're really seeking legal advice from an internet link aggregator, then the best advice you'll get here is to talk to an actual lawyer.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hey folks, I'm the CSO over at DigitalOcean (verification: [https://keybase.io/custos](https://keybase.io/custos)). I'm going to look into this so we can figure out what happened here. Garland, I've temporarily set up an email alias which is my HN username [@] digitalocean.com - can you please shoot me some info?

<comment><USER7> Hi jofe. Without wanting you to comment on specific cases, as a customer paying you $1k per month stories like this terrify me, and it's not the first time I've seen something like this on HN. Can you definitively say whether this kind of thing has ever happened in the past and if it could happen again in the future?

<comment><USER6> Hey drcongo. Things like this occur at every cloud provider and I would never be comfortable promising you it's not a possibility. What I can tell you is that DO invests very heavily in trust and security (moreso than any company of our size that I've seen in my career). While we are far from perfect, we have a ton of controls in-place to ensure things like this don't happen, especially for customers with your type of track record.

Always happy to chat live with you, just open up a ticket or email me at the address above.

<comment><USER7> That's a fair response, and I totally take threatofrain's point below too. I guess a better question would have been: is there anything as a customer I can do to prevent this?

<comment><USER8> Hey drcongo. Jarland from DigitalOcean here. Truthfully, we would have to talk about individual cases to provide a detailed answer. Being aware of who you are and knowing how the details of these cases compare in relation to you, I would say that you already do everything that you should to prevent being caught up in the kind of experience that has you concerned.

I realize that is vague, but it's a bit of a difficult thing to discuss without exposing private data. If I so much as say "Just don't do X" then I'm effectively saying Client A did X. Tough waters to navigate.

I hope that helps a bit at least.

<comment><USER7> Perfect, thanks for taking the time to answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There certainly is. You can sue them. I bet you'd lose, though.

In my opinion you lost your data because you didn't make backups.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, I did have backups luckily off of DigitalOcean (I will have full details in my post), but I have a huge problem with them marketing how great they are to startups and having a backups product that they sell (and also nuked). Any company that does this is not worth dealing with IMO.

<comment><USER10> They are great for startups because you can automate everything. You can delete everything and restore from 0 without needing manually run commands.

Treat it as a temporary server that can disappear at any time, have automated backups and streaming database replication, then have an automated restore script that you test periodically.

If the server goes down, restore somewhere else.

<comment><AUTHOR> You have to have a data layer stored somewhere, are you saying to not store it on digital ocean? All this is a moot point when they destroy your instances and lock your account...

<comment><USER10> it's very poor customer service to be sure, not answering the ticket for 5 weeks is ridiculous, deleting your data sucks too, but you can get to a point where that is only a 30 minute inconvenience.

You store the data in a different place to DO, maybe at home or a cheap VPS somewhere else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sounds incredible to me that anyone would build anything important in the cloud without backups. Seriously, clouds aren't magic, they are just someone else's computer.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm not a lawyer. The TOSs I've seen, not specifically the digital ocean TOS but in general, usually limit the liability to the amount the service costs. If that's the case you might get credited a month.

But laws are really complicated and I don't even attempt to understand them.</comment>


AppDesignify - Quality iPhone app designs without hiring expensive designers - <AUTHOR> http://www.appdesignify.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I would love to hear your feedback!</comment>


Zagg acquires Mophie - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/02/zagg-acquires-mophie/ <comment><USER2> It looks like Mophies sales peeked in 2013 at $215 million and they have been hush about revenue for past 2 years....

[http://www.mlive.com/business/west- michigan/index.ssf/2015/0...](http://www.mlive.com/business/west- michigan/index.ssf/2015/04/a_timeline_in_portable_power_p.html)</comment>


Failure and Redemption - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2013/02/26/failure-and-redemption/ <comment><USER2> Aggregate change happens faster and faster these days but committing to personal change is the hardest.

Depression leads to introspection which leads to processing but change... man, change is the hardest.

Everyone pays lip service to it but the fundamentals to change are complex, and if you're older, with established responsibilities, recombobulating yourself and moving to the next level... man, that's heavy.

Therapy helps, support group helps, destroying your ego helps, but sometimes these are all very privileged. Sometimes you don't get the benefit of affording therapy, finding support, or get the time to learn humility.

And you're doing this in the midst of aggregate change happening around you, beholden to trends and action from others around you, and still needing to sleep on a bed, eat solid food, exercise, and maintain your sanity.

Sometimes when people ask me what luck is, I explain it as such. Luck is when all those things align in a way to assist you on your way.

Most people end up getting lost in the fray, a lot of the people I met during the web 2.0 cycle disappeared. And it's likely the new people I meet in the upcoming cycle will end up disappearing too. Who will remember the stories when the actors are gone?

In the end you just gotta keep pushing, keep swimming, keep going. Either you'll get it, or you won't, accepting is salvation.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is interesting to see this from a (former) CEO's perspective. I've seen many big company executives who get stuck in stage 3. I knew that my last big company was destined for failure when the CEO bought everyone a management book about dealing with change. He seemed to be saying, "its not me, its you". If he had a bit more humility, he could have made the changes to get the company moving again. Of course, it can be hard to accept responsibility when egos are big and failures are politicized.

In a startup, you have this process not just for the company itself, but for each setback (e.g. in fundraising, customer acquisition, customer issues, etc.). Establishing a culture of accepting responsibility and learning from failures is absolutely critical. I think the biggest thing I've learned about my time in the startup space is how to deal effectively (or at least better) with failure.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's more or less the Stages of Grief (with shock and surprise being an early form of denial). Failure is a form of grieving and loss, grieving for the end- of-life of a project and losing the identity attached to the project ("I am project lead"). [<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model>]

What's more interesting is the acceptance of the transient nature of things. All things begin and ends. You might not know _when_ it is ending. You can, however, see the signs of the end well before things end. Shock happens after a prolonged bout of denial, that the end is near.

I'm not sure how this integrates with entrepreneurial tenacity, other than that, it is much easier to find creative ways to move forward when you're not desperately trying to find ways to hang on to the past, your identity, and the "way things are supposed to be." Sometimes, it's the fundamental assumptions that needs to be let go. When you do that before everything falls apart completely, I suppose that's called a pivot.

<comment><USER5> Even I thought the same. I think failure of a startup is nothing short of grief.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fantastic post. Entrepreneurs should make it a goal to go through the steps as quickly as possible. But you can only do that when you fail a lot. Why? This allows you to simply own failure and not let it slow you down.

</comment><comment><USER7> The road to success is a process of failing in increasingly smaller amounts. Success is not achieved by avoiding failure, but by how it is handled. Those who continue on the road in the face of failure may eventually find success, but those who stop moving forward never will.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is how founders should deal with startup failure</comment>


Show HN: Gymer – Gym by the hour - <AUTHOR> https://www.gymer.in/

<comment><AUTHOR> Gymer is a mobile app and web-based service that provides a cashless system for booking instant or in-advance workout sessions on an hourly basis. Users can decide when and where to work out, with a 'pay-as-you-go' option</comment>


Data-mining medieval text reveals medically bioactive ingredients - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611751/data-mining-medieval-text-reveals-medically-bioactive-ingredients/ <comment><AUTHOR> _It implies that the conventional view of medieval medicine as little more than hocus pocus needs to be rethought._

Is that a common opinion on medival medicine? I never thought that it was all hocus pocus but only that their explanations were totally wrong most of the time.

An example is the medival idea that bad smells transfer diseases. It's not the smell itself but since it is a byproduct of rotting and decay, avoiding the smell made people also avoid the source of some infections. So it's easy to come to this conclusion.

That is why I think that having a closer look at old medical recipes is a great _starting point_ \- not the solution but a thing worth looking at.</comment>


Ask HN: PHP to RoR, dreamhost to what? - <AUTHOR>

I've been writing PHP and hosting everything on dreamhost for about a year. I just started learning Ruby/Rails today. I'd like to change my host to something that will (1) support both Rails and PHP and (2) scale easily if any of my future projects happen to gain traction.<p>Which do you recommend? (I've heard both AWS and Heroku mentioned, but have no clue otherwise.) <comment><USER2> It's worth noting that you can run Rails on Dreamhost. Don't really remember the details (I'm a Python guy, and it's been a while since I used Dreamhost) but it's probably searchable and if not, I'm sure customer service can help you. Dreamhost may not be the right choice for a heavy-load web application, but it is probably an excellent place to get your feet wet.

</comment><comment><USER3> Slicehost and Linode are both pretty good for scalable VPS hosting.

<comment><USER4> Another recommendation for Linode. I run four apps (two of which were on the front page of HN and saw the subsequent traffic spike) on my 768 linode and have had no problems handling the traffic.

<comment><USER5> I can also vouch for this Linode recommendation.</comment></comment></comment>


Steve Jobs and the Missing "Intel Inside" Sticker - <AUTHOR> http://kensegall.com/2017/06/steve-jobs-and-the-missing-intel-inside-sticker/ <comment><USER3> The Intel Inside campaign wasn't just a consumer branding strategy. First and foremost it was a predatory marketing campaign that turned into exclusionary behavior. PC firms that used Intel chips and put Intel Inside on their PC's were given funds to use in advertising and were reimbursed for "marketing expenses". In reality these marketing funds were actually a subsidy/discount (some would say kickback) on Intel chips. As Intel's power grew they would only give the PC manufacturers rebates if they would buy 95% of their Microprocessors from Intel. If they used AMD or other microprocessors - <USER2> the Intel rebates would disappear. By the end of the 1990s, Intel had spent more than $7 billion on the Intel Inside campaign and had 2,700 PC firms locked up. By 2001 these rebates were running $1.5 billion a year.

Intel was sued in Japan (for offering money to NEC, Fujitsu, Toshiba, Sony, and Hitachi,) in the EU (for paying German retailers to sell Intel PC's only) and in the U.S. for predatory (pricing), exclusionary behavior, and the abuse of a dominant position (HP, Dell, Sony, Toshiba, Gateway and Hitachi.) The legal record is pretty clear that Intel used payments, marketing loyalty rebates and threats to persuade computer manufacturers, including Dell and Hewlett-Packard (HP), to limit their use of AMD processors. U.S. antitrust authorities have focused on whether the loyalty rebates used by Intel were a predatory device in violation of the Sherman Act. The European Commission (EC) brought similar charges and imposed a 1.06 billion Euros fine on Intel for abuse of a dominant position.

The sum of these efforts not only killed competitors but it killed innovation in microprocessor design outside of Intel for decades.

Ironically Intel's lack of innovation in the 21st century is a direct result of its 20th century policy of being a monopolist.

<comment><USER4> Not to disagree with your point about monopolism, but "Intel Inside" came about in that weird period of PC history where IBM had been dethroned, but nobody had taken charge. PC companies were manufacturing "clones" of increasingly outdated systems, and the pain-points were numerous and obvious. It really was a "unique branding opportunity" for someone to step-up and define the post-IBM PC market.

Which Intel did. They were largely the one who turned primitive PC ATs + 57 different hacks into the modern PC platform. APIC PCI USB etc. (AMD gets credit for 64-bit largely because Intel refused to do so.) "Intel Inside" wasn't just marketing kickbacks, it was a badly-needed standardization program.

<comment><USER5> > AMD gets credit for 64-bit largely because Intel refused to do so

Yeah, no. Amd64 was made at a time where AMD was on top of its game, they released to the general public first while intel64 still wasn't ready, and microsoft annonced both that 1. windows was going to support amd64, and 2. windows was not going to support two different instruction sets for x86_64, effectively forcing Intel to implement the amd set which they still need to licence to this day.

Calling it "Intel let AMD get the credit because they couldn't be bothered" is either a lack of information over what happened or a nice rewrite of history, back then Intel was already feeling the effect of monopoly without competition which made them late on everything and pushing their pentium4 against the upcoming athlon 64 monster.

<comment><USER6> I think there is a reasonable argument that Intel "refused" to create a cheap 64bit competitor to IA-64, which they tried to push "serious" users (server business) to. When the shoe dropped that only pushing Itanium wasn't going to work, AMD already was ahead on the 64bit extension to x86.

<comment><USER5> No there isn't and this is history rewriting, even if you genuinely believe this could be this is not what happened at all.

First it's pretty clear, seeing how Intel played their game with the x86 licence, they would never have voluntarily made themselves depend on AMD licensing them x86_64 for the next decades like they are now.

Second, back then Intel was very seriously asking / pressuring microsoft into not supporting amd64 extension and wait for intel64 to be released instead. But intel64 was late and delayed, pentium 4 kept hitting brick walls while Athlon started reigning supreme, opteron was starting to be noticed on the server side, and IA-64 was not getting outside of niche territory. Meanwhile linux started making some real pressure on the server andbusiness demands meant microsoft needed to show a windows that supported 64 bits on commodity hardware, asap. Amd64 was ready and the chip using it were cheap and powerfull, so microsoft made their choice.

<comment><USER6> I'm still not sure what part exactly you see as inaccurate. The notion that Intel didn't work on x86_64 early enough? The assumption that if Intel had an x86_64 product first it would have had a chance against AMDs?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I guess I thought this might actually tell the story of how Apple negotiated not to have the Intel inside sticker. Instead it just states that the sticker wasn't there and goes "we can only guess"

<comment><USER8> IIRC the Intel Inside sticker got OEMs a better price on the CPU. Apple probably agreed to pay the higher price and not have their sleek hardware cases sullied by the presence of a (gasp) _sticker_.

Or perhaps there was enough incentive for Intel to get rid of the last remaining PowerPC platform in end-user computing. Certainly in volume alone Apple doesn't represent a very significant supplier of Intel-based computers.

<comment><USER9> Apple has more market power than you think -- they focus on a few models, those models sell like hot cakes and Apple pays for guarantees to get inventory. For Intel that means their factories keep pumping out chips like clockwork and inventory is low.

Dell or HP sells more units, but in 300 or more SKUs each. Apple is different enough to get better terms.

<comment><USER10> This. Intel does not make money from the CPU in the broader sense, they make money by running their production lines at full tilt and getting paid for what comes off them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I just had a look at a newish Lenovo sitting next to me and it's packed with gaudy logos stuck to the inside hand-rests:

* Intel Inside

* AMD Radeon graphics

* Energy Star

* 2x JBL speakers (two mentions of JBL, one's not even a sticker)

* Dolby Digital Plus

...and a few others that depict generic features of the laptop (Do I really need a sticker to tell me I have a webcam on this thing?) Honestly it just looks tacky, like a Nascar car. I'll peel them off some time but yuck, totally tasteless.

<comment><USER12> Such a weird comment on a Hacker site (at the top too). Hackers used to care a lot less about status and appearances, and more about doing cool shit. It's unfortunate that changed.

<comment><USER13> It's entirely possible to care about doing cool shit tastefully.

<comment><USER12> Taste clouds the mind. It introduces preconceptions, encourages judgement, and makes it harder to see the true value in something. Thankfully, many hackers were not dismissed due to their lack of "taste".

Just take the Lenovo laptop for example. I don't know which model it is, but some models are incredibly practical. They have very long battery life, beautiful keyboards, and are built like a tank. But no, let's focus on the stickers.

<comment><USER14> _Just take the Lenovo laptop for example. I don 't know which model it is, but some models are incredibly practical. They have very long battery life, beautiful keyboards, and are built like a tank._

Which is presumably why the previous poster has one sitting next to him.

 _But no, let 's focus on the stickers._

It is the focus of this thread. Why would you even open it if you're not interested in discussing them?

<comment><USER11> Exactly. I got the laptop because it's an excellent work horse, has specs suitable for what I need it for (programming), and runs Debian like a champ. The point, which I probably failed to get across, is that I find it funny how Lenovo put so much care into making a kickass laptop, then proceeded to carelessly slap a whole bunch of stickers all over it. Obviously the stickers can be removed but it seems like such a lapse in design quality for an otherwise very good laptop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Steve was right. It really set the MacBooks apart when all of the other computers were literally festooned with a dozen cartoonish stickers all over making them look like cheap toys.

Worse still, as you used the computers in real life, all of those stickers degraded into a gluey mess that got all over everything when you touched them.

I still have flashbacks of using a heatgun and alcohol wipes to un-sticker 2 dozen new HP laptops before rolling them out. Ugh.

<comment><USER16> I collect those stickers and intend to use them mischievously. Chromebook? i7 sticker with a tiling window manager and you instantly have what appears to be a hacker grade laptop. Fancy i7 machine? Celeron, obviously.

This I do not do due to the shortage of genuine stickers. Maybe I will fix someone's computer one day. I will just add the sticker and they will feel it go faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Something I'm more curious about is how they got out of putting carrier branding on the iPhone. As others have said, the Intel Inside program wasn't mandatory. But from what little I've heard about this, AT&T was very reluctant to concede this when the iPhone debuted. I wonder what concessions Apple had to make, and if the initial exclusivity had anything to do with it.

<comment><USER18> People forget this but Apple didn't sign a contract with AT&T. They signed one with Cingular, which happened to be bought by AT&T right then.

They got extremely lucky negotiating a contract with a smaller carrier, which then transformed into one with a bigger one.

<comment><USER19> Was it Cingular that got that very first Edge iPhone? Man that was so long ago, but that does sound right. IIRC Cingular was part of AT&T originally, then split off, and then was re-absorbed. Eventually SBS bought AT&T, a couple of Bells and other carriers and renamed itself to AT&T.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > I approached him with my biggest concern: "Please tell me we won't have to > put the Intel Inside logo on our Macs."

> With a big grin, Steve looked me in the eye and said, "Trust me, I made sure > that's in the contract."

Isn't that all there is to it? If you don't want an "Intel Inside" sticker slapped on your computer, you negotiate it in the Contract.

Was Intel that aggressive that they wouldn't sell the chip unless you slapped their sticker on your computers?? What am I missing?

<comment><USER21> Of course, the contract says you pay a higher price if you don't have the sticker.

<comment><USER22> Or some other consideration; it doesn't have to be monetary.

For instance, maybe the fact that they heavily refer to the architecture switch as "Intel" vs. "PowerPC" instead of "x86" vs. "PowerPC" was enough to assuage Intel from a marketing standpoint.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Apple switching to x86 was great publicity for Intel. It was a big deal. People, blogs, mass media talked about it a lot.

Because of this, I'm sure Steve negotiated a good price on those chips without Apple needing to be part of the "Intel Inside" program to get cheaper CPUs.

</comment><comment><USER24> Dell tried this with their Adamo line but couldn't go as far as removing it entirely; they ended up laser engraving it onto the bottom so it wouldn't be as gaudy: [https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/First-Look/Dell- Adamo/719/1#s38...](https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/First-Look/Dell- Adamo/719/1#s3824)

</comment><comment><USER25> This article is not quite correct about why Apple switched to Intel. IBM was unable to provide a G5 chip suitable for laptop use. That's the whole reason in a nutshell.

<comment><USER26> Apple knew about the P.A. Semi PWRficient, which was a beast beyond Intel chips by a large margin.

<comment><USER27> The PWRficient processors started shipping a year after Intel's 64-bit mobile processor (Core 2). If PA Semi had delivered those chips two years earlier, Apple would probably have used them and put off the Intel switch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Did Ken Segall work in Apple during the time of iMac ? According to his linkedin Profile he was a consultant for Apple between 2005 - 2008. iMac was introduced in 1998.

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably during the Intel iMacs which came out in 2006ish, thus the reason he discusses the switchover from PowerPC to Intel.

The move to Intel in 2006ish really was a genius move and game-changer just before iPhone launched. At agencies and game studios suddenly Apple was it for both designers and developers wanting a pretty *nix. Just in time for the new gaming/app platform 1-2 years later once the SDK launched.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Apple has similar strict guidelines for Made for iPod devices.

</comment><comment><USER30> Google cache link: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nsLB1cG...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nsLB1cGJhukJ:kensegall.com/2017/06/steve- jobs-and-the-missing-intel-inside-sticker/)

</comment><comment><USER31> Am I the only one who thinks that the three ads mentioned in the article (Snail, Burning Bunny, Steamroller) are incredibly tacky?

The Apple ad from that era that people love and remember is Richard Dreyfus' Crazy Ones, and the author even thinks that they "upgraded to Jeff Goldblum".

<comment><USER32> I like them as ads. I still have the pentium snail somewhere in my desktop pictures folders. I don't mind negative ads at all when they're clever (and come from the underdog).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Just to save folks some time, this doesn't give any details of how Steve got away with not putting on the sticker. Just says he said "trust me I'll make sure that won't happen " and then he negotiated it.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is a very long-winded way to say "We tried one tactic, they didn't take the bait, so we suckered them by buying their product". It's painted as an Apple victory because there's no sticker on the laptop, but not as an Intel victory, despite Apple switching to their chips. Weird.

<comment><USER35> > It's painted as an Apple victory

It's painted as "Apple and Intel both won, without Apple having to give up something they cared about"

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> PCs were faster than Macs in 1997 and they still are.

</comment><comment><USER37> Jobs was a genius at finding and employing the best ad agencies/talent and letting them work their magic. It is a large part of his mystique</comment>


Learning C: Why (38 == '&' && 046 == 0x26 ) is true - <AUTHOR> http://www.cvursache.com/#blog-learning-c-number-representations

<comment><USER2> This works the same way in almost any language. Numbers can be represented as decimal, octal, hexadecimal, binary, ... It's not anything special to C.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out (: The blogpost explains how in learning C after years with PHP, MySQL, JavaScript and Objective-C one discovers little things about CS that weren't visible before while working on a higher abstraction level.</comment></comment>


The toughest decision of my life - <AUTHOR> http://rodinhood.com/2010/06/17/the-toughest-decision-of-my-life/

<comment><USER2> Note that "promoter" in this context is Indian English for something like owner/founder.

</comment><comment><USER3> no one start up is worth the initial fuck you money that allows you to spend the rest of your life working on cool startups rather than on someone elses boring stuff.

<comment><USER2> True, although the 3 year world-wide non-compete in the mobile market was also an issue (see his comment [http://rodinhood.com/2010/06/17/the-toughest- decision-of-my-...](http://rodinhood.com/2010/06/17/the-toughest-decision-of- my-life/#comment-375)).

I can see this being a difficult decision, but he only took a few weeks to come to the right one (at the time, let alone with 20/20 hindsight).

<comment><USER3> non-competes don't hold up well in court.

<comment><USER2> But they can have a chilling effect in attracting investment (been there, done that, in proto-companies where other key people had been foolish enough to sign them).

Part of the calculation is that if you turn out to be successful the threatening party will have every motivation to sue.

I'm certain the unenforceability of them in California has a lot to do with the sustained success of Silicon Valley (although in this case, as a founder, his might be enforceable there).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A little to much schadenfreude for my taste. Is it really all about winning?

<comment><USER5> I see no schadenfreude in this article. On the contrary, I see this:

"For me, this was not sweet revenge but just the toughest decision (to sell or fight) that had turned out so positively!!"

I'm not sure why you ask the general question about winning. This is a story of a man making a choice that he thought would better his condition. He had no reason to do otherwise.

<comment><USER6> _"... I'm not sure why you ask the general question about winning. ..."_

From the VC point of view and the deal not going ahead unless Alok is totally removed is all about control and winning. I think the most positive lesson Alok demonstrated here is _"... Sell when the going is good – not when the time is right. ..."_ ~ [http://rodinhood.com/2010/06/05/confessions-of-a- digital-ent...](http://rodinhood.com/2010/06/05/confessions-of-a-digital- entrepreneur/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Operators were unrelenting to share more than 20-25% revenues, payments were delayed by months ..."

Joy of the bussines with middleman between you and your source of revenue.

</comment><comment><USER8> I understand that it must be frustrating to be forced out of your own company, but seriously -- you made a shitload of money. Be happy it worked out to your advantage, and go find something new to do.

</comment><comment><USER9> The rest of his blog is quite good as well, recommend reading it.</comment>


MongoDB v2.2 released, now with database level locking - <AUTHOR> http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/release-notes/2.2/#

<comment><USER2> Sorry, these release notes reflect the 2.2-rc0 release candidate and do _not_ reflect the release of 2.2, which is still forthcoming. rc0 is currently available for testing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Title should be edited to reflect that this is the first release candidate, rather than GA.</comment>